He had formed no plan. Time would, he doubted not, bring forth some opportunity, and for that he waited; enjoying himself, meanwhile, as a young man about town, with time on his hands and money in his pocket, best can enjoy himself. He was no moody Zanga, with one fixed idea. He did not go scowling through society like the villain of a tragedy, solacing himself with saturnine monologues, and talking of nothing, thinking of nothing, but of his wrongs and his revenge. Such monomaniacs may exist, but they are rare, and he was not of them. His heart swelled, and his temples throbbed, whenever he thought of his hated mistress, and the thirst for vengeance was not slaked by thinking of it. But this dark spot was only a spot in his life, other thoughts occupied him, other interests attracted him, throwing this quite into the background.
CHAPTER VII.
ROSE VYNER WRITES TO FANNY WORSLEY.
"Oh! about gaieties, I assure you I have little to tell. We go to very few parties. Mama says dancing is so frivolous: though I observe she dances all the evening when we do by chance go to a ball. Papa sides with her, and says he cannot conceive what pleasure people take in it. Perhaps not; but we can! However, we dare not complain, and mama is so kind to us that, on the whole, we get on very well, though I long to be in the country. Last Saturday week, we were invited to Dr. Whiston's; a wise place where every one looks like an oracle, where there are few young men, and those generally sickly, fewer nice men, and scarcely any one Blanche and I know to speak to. Mama likes these sort of places. She is so clever, and manages to talk with all the oracles upon their separate sciences, though she never opens a scientific book from one month to another; but somehow she can dispense with knowledge, and yet contrive that people should believe her deeply-read. But then she is so strange! I must interrupt my narrative to tell you something which I can't make out in her. She gets more admiration, in spite of her deformity, than we could ever pretend to; and her style of beauty seems to be exactly what men delight in.
"How she manages to persuade us, I don't know, but the result is, we never look well when we go out to a party. This, and our not being overwise, prevents our finding much enjoyment at Dr. Whiston's; so we went on that memorable evening prepared for a yawn. Mama quickly got us seats, and then sailed about the room talking to her friends. This she does invariably. It is called chaperoning. Though what protection young girls need at such places, and how this can be considered as protection, are two things I have not yet comprehended. Well, I seem as if I were never coming to the point, eh? And yet all this preparation is to usher in no adorably handsome young man with bushy whiskers and sleepy eyes, like him we used to see at church when we were at Mrs. Wirrelston's, and when you persuaded me I was in love with that little humpbacked lawyer, in nankeens, who used to ogle us so (do you remember?)—but, on the contrary, to tell you my evening was rendered perfectly delightful by a certain Julius St. John, who sat by my side and chatted away so pleasantly, that my evening fled as rapidly as Cinderella's. And it was his conversation—nothing else; for I declare he was unreasonably hideous...
"I am almost ashamed of that last line. Why should I say he was hideous? He wasn't. He was adorably ugly. I never cared for beauty, as you know, or you would not have persuaded me into a little sentiment for my nankeened humpback; and it is very foolish in us all to make such a fuss about it: the plainest men are certainly the most agreeable! But, however, it is no use preaching to you on this subject; you who refuse to dance with every man whom you don't think good-looking!
"Enough for you to know that my dear, little, ugly man was unaffectedly chatty, and very clever; and that our conversation was so pleasant, I was quite impatient for yesterday, the second Saturday for which we were invited to Dr. Whiston's,—expecting to see him there and to renew our tête-à-tête. I had arranged all sorts of topics. In my mind's eye, I prefigured his animated pleasure at espying me, and then his coming up and securing a seat, and chatting more charmingly than before. Some of my replies were so clever that they astonished me. How brilliantly I did talk! How many little scenes of this kind were rehearsed in my imagination, I leave you to guess, if you have ever been impatient for any meeting. They were delicious; but they made the reality only more cruel.
"Conceive my disappointment: he was there, yet never came to sit beside me! When first he saw me, his welcome was so warm that it was the realization of what I had expected; but he suffered us to pass on into the last room without once thinking of accompanying us. I was mortified, I confess. I expected to find him as anxious to renew our tête-à-tête as myself, and began to be ashamed of having thought so much of him, when it was clear he had not bestowed a thought on me.
"We sat in our sullen seats, and looked on in no very amiable mood; that is, I was cross; Blanche, dear creature, had nothing to ruffle her sweet equanimity. It then occurred to me that he would assuredly soon find us out; but he did not. I sat there in vain. The people never before seemed so dull and stupid. The rooms never were so hot. I longed for mama to fetch us away.
"At last he did condescend to approach us and ask us some trivial questions, which irritated me so much that I hardly deigned to answer him. He did not seem in the least surprised by my behaviour; and that made me angrier. It was quite a relief to me when he turned round to speak to some one and went away.